Being ‘Over Sensitive’ Helps Me Love, Learn and Feel Deeper, and I’m Glad For It
“Being sensitive could have made me hard, or closed off from the things I couldn’t face, but it didn’t. It made me want to make it all kinder.”
Words: Sian Brett
“I was always told, from a young age, that I was sensitive. Quick to cry, not a fan of loud noises, or of too much attention. I hated being wrong, or feeling stupid. I couldn’t sit still when things weren’t quite right. My instinct in these moments of stress or unhappiness was always tears. My poor parents must have despaired over me. Not hardy, but weak and shy.
Although I (mostly) got a grip on the constant streams of tears, my late teens and early twenties were filled with a sense that certain things were closed off to me. I was terrified of riding a bike, or learning to drive, or of dating. I wouldn’t be able to handle these things, and so I shouldn’t even bother trying.
“How wonderful that is, to feel fiercely, love passionately, hold people and things close to my heart”
I treated my sensitivity like a personality deficit, as though it was a fault - something had gone wrong, somewhere, and now I was stuck like this, feeling all my feelings too much. I adapted, and tried to be less, or smaller, to pretend I didn’t feel everything as strongly as I really did. As we all know, squashing your feelings down and making them smaller tends to make them erupt, rather than go away.
It wasn’t until it came to doing therapy, in 2021, that I managed to see this in another way.
I had partly begun therapy as a way to cope with this sense that so many things were closed off to me. I was sick of feeling as though there were things that I could not do, and wanted to seek some professional help about it.
Through hours of talking about my present, past and future with an incredible psychotherapist I found myself in a place where I could say - “I’m glad that I’m sensitive. It’s a strength.”
This was no quick fix however, and I wouldn’t want you to think there was. Therapy is work, and hard work, and continues to be work long after you have finished actually speaking to someone. But those therapy sessions gave me the tools to turn around my negative beliefs about myself, and to make them into strengths.
Because yes, I am sensitive, I do feel things strongly. But because I am sensitive, I am a good and loyal friend. Because I am sensitive I am a great gift giver, a celebrator of birthdays and promotions, and a good listener. I am a great audience member, laughing and weeping at films and plays and comedy. I’m empathetic, and I care, a lot, about how you are feeling, any of you, all of you. When I love someone I love them hard. Once they are in, that’s it.
I’m kind to strangers, and nice to waiters, and I smile at people on the street, because if I put out good into the world, then the good might come back round to me. It sounds selfish perhaps, but it does mean that there’s a little more good out there. Being sensitive to the world could have made me hard, or closed off from the things I couldn’t face, but it didn’t. It made me want to make it all kinder.
And whilst it was therapy that gave me the tools to recognise my sensitivity as a strength, that strength itself was something that I always had within me.
So yes, I’m sensitive. I feel things strongly. But how wonderful that is, to feel fiercely, love passionately, hold people and things close to my heart. I wear my heart on my sleeve, sure, but what a big heart it is.”
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Thank you to the brilliant Sian for contributing this piece! To see more from Sian, sign up to her newsletter Notes From a Small Kitchen here!